January always seems to drag on and yet I’m still late writing this post. I guess it’s been a little busy but perhaps I was also just being lazy. It’s not been easy getting motivated to do anything. My actions were as frozen as the city around me, but that’s starting to change. So let’s get into my 2025 goals.
Tag: Reading Challenge Page 1 of 3
I did much better on my Goodreads reading challenge this year. The goal was set at 12 books and I finished 13 books this year. I finished the last book a mere 4 hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve. However, I did not knock any more books off my “read again” list primarily because I spent most of the year reading several series, as you will see in the list below.
- A Killer’s Mind by Mike Omer
- The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen
- The Faithless Hawk by Margaret Owen
- Empire of Storms by Sarah Maas
- Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston
- Fate of the Jedi: Omen by Christie Golden
- Kingdom of Ash by Sarah Maas
- Fate of the Jedi: Abyss by Troy Denning
- Fate of the Jedi: Backlash by Aaron Allston
- The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah Maas
- The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
- Fate of the Jedi: Allies by Christie Golden
- Forever Free by Joe Haldeman
Reading Challenge Statistics
As I said earlier, I read 13 books in 2024; of those 13 books, only 1 is not part of a series. The other 12 books are part of The Merciful Crow, Fate of the Jedi, Throne of Glass, and The Forever Free series. A Killer’s Mind is a crime novel that is outside my normal genre of books. The rest of the books are all in the fantasy and/or sci-fi genres.
Goodreads sent me a summary of the books I read in 2024 and I thought the data was pretty interesting. I read 5,473 pages excluding the book I’m already reading. The longest book I read was Kingdom of Ash at 980 pages and the shortest book was The Forever War at 254 pages.
If you like science fiction then I recommend The Forever War and Forever Free. The Throne of Glass books are really good but it’s an eight-book commitment and many of the books are pretty long.
The Fate of the Jedi series consists of nine books and they are considered Legends (i.e. it is not considered canon). The books take place about 40 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. I am really enjoying these books and I look forward to finishing the series in early 2025. I’ll get into the 2025 goals in an upcoming post.
How did you do with your 2024 reading goals?
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
– Dr. Seuss
Ahh, the notorious goals (or more colloquially known as resolutions). I will cover the usual three main areas of focus: Technical Skills, Reading Challenge, and Wellness. I’m hoping for a little more diligence on my part to really focus on all of these goals. I did pretty well last year but there were a couple of bumps along the way. So let’s set those 2024 goals, shall we?
The reading challenge goal was 12 books and I missed it by about 150 pages. If I hadn’t decided to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve I might have finished the last few pages. Oh well, it’s close enough for me to let it go. Be that as it may, here are the eleven books I did manage to finish for the 2023 Goodreads reading challenge (** indicates a book I’ve read before).
- Storm Front** by Jim Butcher
- Winter** by Marissa Meyer
- Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas
- Eragon** by Christopher Paolini
- Crown of Midnight by Sarah Maas
- Eldest** by Christopher Paolini
- Heir of Fire by Sarah Maas
- Brisingr** by Christopher Paolini
- Queen of Shadows by Sarah Maas
- Inheritance** by Christopher Paolini
- Tower of Dawn by Sarah Maas
I just came in under the wire for my 2022 Goodreads reading challenge (I literally read the last page of the last book 2 hours before midnight). If you happened to read my 2021 reading challenge recap I read 16 books that year. You will notice the list below only has 12 books. Why so few? Two of the books on the list combined for a total of almost 2,000 pages. I knew, by reading those books, it was going to affect my total for the year. Therefore I decided to be a little more reasonable with my goal.
Here is my 2022 Goodreads reading challenge list (** indicates a book I’ve read before):
- Traitor by Clare Farrell
- Kubrick’s Game** by Derek Taylor Kent
- To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
- Skin Game by Jim Butcher
- The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
- Peace Talks by Jim Butcher
- Cinder** by Marissa Meyer
- Battle Ground by Jim Butcher
- Scarlet** by Marissa Meyer
- The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz
- Cress** by Marissa Meyer
- Empire Strikes Back From A Certain Point of View by various authors
It’s that time again, time to make my 2022 New Years intentions. I made some progress in all of the areas in which I declared intentions in 2021. I will get into more details in each of their respective sections below. 2021 was not as challenging of a year as 2020 but it had its moments. This damn Covid virus continues to wreak havoc physically, mentally and emotionally. It has the country, and possibly the world, divided. Some are scared, some refuse to be afraid, and some just don’t know what to believe anymore. The media is at fault.